LETTER FROM RIO DE JANEIRO

Saying no to tricks and treats in Brazil

But Colin McMahon wonders if Halloween is really that big a threat to the culture

November 03, 2006|By Colin McMahon, the Tribune's South America correspondent.

RIO DE JANEIRO — Around a corner from Rio de Janeiro's St. John the Baptist cemetery, where Brazilians solemnly gathered Thursday to mark the Day of the Dead, comes a different kind of message about holidays and death.

"To hell with Halloween," reads a sign plastered to a wall underneath a giant beer billboard. "Long live our national culture."

The message, which is actually saltier than translated here, is clear, except to the millions of Brazilians who probably have never heard of Halloween.

But just to bring home the point, the word "Halloween" is underlined with the red, white and blue of the United States. "National" is set off by stripes of Brazilian yellow and green.

And so another battle line is drawn in the international conflict over the economic and cultural power of the United States.

The latest offending export is not soda pop or Hollywood schlock. It's the ghosts and getups of Halloween that outrage, the tricks and treats that scholars trace back 2,000 years to ancient Celtic civilization.

"We must all reject this," said the protest organizers, who described Halloween as a "satanic sect, disguised as cultural expression."

Lest anyone think the protest springs from a belief that Halloween conflicts with Christianity, however, the Movement for the Valorization of the Culture, Language and Richness of Brazil makes clear that the devil lives not below, but above. To the north.

"We can no longer abide such subversive concessions to our culture," says the movement's anti-Halloween manifesto.

One can see why some Mexicans are uneasy about the cultural impact of Halloween. For them, the Day of the Dead is one of the year's most important holidays, sacred to some. And Mexico has a particularly complex and sometimes painfully close relationship with the United States.

But in Brazil, most people see the dispute as a phantom. Halloween is far less of an event here than in other countries.

Those Brazilians who celebrate Halloween use it merely as another excuse to party. There are few decorations about town. Children do not trick-or-treat. And in the costume stores of Rio de Janeiro, even at this time of year, Carnival outfits still win out over scary masks and witches' hats.

"Halloween is really an American thing," said Teresa Cristina Rodrigues, who tried a promotional Halloween theme in her pet shop for a spell but gave it up for lack of response. "Brazilian culture is completely different."

Rodrigues was at the cemetery Thursday, placing lilies on the family plot, mourning her parents and lamenting that the Day of the Dead in Brazil means less than it once did.

For Jorge Becher Mezher, an agricultural engineer, the idea that Halloween could pollute Brazilian culture is a stretch.

After all, he pointed out while standing before a marble family crypt, the concept of embalming, entombing and revering the dead is not a Brazilian invention. It goes back to the ancients.

"This started with the Egyptians," he said. "We copy things, and the good things we copy are still with us today."

But Halloween? No, not much in Brazil. At least, not yet.

"This thing with the witches, it's for the Americans," Becher Mezher said. "They are the only ones who believe in witches."